Gigabit Ethernet–The Core of the Network

Gigabit ethernet is fast becoming an industry standard. Do you know what it is? More important, do you know what it can do to bolster the networking power of your most demanding RIP workstation or workgroup server? Better find out—your competition may already be capitalizing on this ethernet craze.

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO

Centralized content. As more and more digitally minded commercial printers exploit the merits of faster desktop publishing workstations and higher performance servers, fast ethernet functionality is becoming the standard connection. But, for truly high performance networking, gigabit ethernet is making some serious strides.

What is gigabit ethernet?

Put simply, “gigabit” is a networking technology that allows a commercial printer to transfer more data around its organization faster at 1,000 mbps—1,000 megabits or 1,000,000 bits of data per second—roughly a 10 times improvement over fast ethernet.

“In other words, it’s a much fatter pipe for data to flow through,” explains John Marshall, industry marketing manager for media and entertainment at 3Com. “Furthermore, it is a familiar technology, similar to fast ethernet, so it protects a commercial printer’s MIS and production employees from the need to learn an entirely new technology, which translates into saved training dollars.”

Acting as a pipeline for digital information, gigabit ethernet allows graphic arts organizations to utilize a significantly higher bandwidth for work on RIP workstations and an array of other workgroup components. Gigabit ethernet can increase the overall throughput of a prepress department, typically by a factor of four times to 15 times, thereby allowing prepress personnel to handle more tasks per day.